Rating: *****
Nintendo
Wii
He’s eaten mushrooms to change size, sprouted a raccoon tail to fly, sat atop a trusty dinosaur steed and rescued a certain blonde princess oh-so-many times, but Mario’s most bizarre adventure has only just arrived. After Mario 64 made the jump to 3D, it was uncertain whether or not the mustachioed plumber had any more impressive frontiers to conquer. Then it was announced that Super Mario Galaxy would take him to the final frontier: space. You have to worry a little when a franchise moves to space. Remember what happened to the Friday the 13th and Leprechaun movies …
But Mario’s celestial journey is really an excuse to play around with gravity, and the result is the most insane platformer ever created. There are sprawling levels where up can suddenly become down and vice versa. There are tiny planetoids inhabited by enormous bosses. There are jump puzzles so ingenious, mind-bending and visually stunning, it’ll feel like you’re platforming through a Salvador Dali painting. Nintendo has done it again. Somehow, they’ve made rescuing the princess feel groundbreaking and new.
BLACKSITE: AREA 51 (T)
Rating: **1/2
Midway
Xbox 360
Haven’t we shot enough big alien bugs in video games? I used to feel like a badass xenocidal marine, but now I just feel like an intergalactic exterminator on a tedious fumigation rampage. Aside from some decent destructible environments, there is nothing in BlackSite to differentiate it from the myriad other big-bug-killing shooters. The game tries to incorporate some sort of morale system that affects the performance of your troops, but I find more often that the performance of my troops affects my own morale system.
SCENE IT? LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION (T)
Rating: ***1/2
Microsoft Game Studios
Xbox 360
To the delight of Xbox-owning movie buffs, the ultimate cinema trivia game has finally gotten the video game treatment. $60 seems pretty steep for a trivia game, but the format’s a lot more user friendly than the original DVD-based gameplay. Scene It? comes with four buzzer controllers (like PS2’s Buzz) as well as 1800 questions and challenges (which your Xbox keeps track of to spare you any repeats). So now you can impress your friends with how much time you’ve wasted in front of the big screen … while wasting more time in front of the little screen.
BEOWULF (M)
Rating: *1/2
Ubisoft
Xbox 360
This game actually has more in common with the original 1300-year-old epic poem than it has with the new CG film. It has an overpowered protagonist, is filled to the brim with repetitive monster slaying, and is an excruciatingly dull and joyless exercise. The only difference is that the antiquated language of 700 A.D. actually makes more sense than this game’s story.
When Las Vegas Weekly contributor Matthew Scott Hunter realized his career as a lab technician was seriously interfering with his gaming, he pink-slipped himself into a successful career as a freelance writer. Bug the hell out of him at [email protected]